Galliano Can’t Recall Anti-Semitic Rant, to Blame Addiction

June 22 (Bloomberg) -- John Galliano, the designer fired by
Christian Dior SA over a video recording of his saying “I love
Hitler,” will tell a Paris court he doesn’t remember two other
incidents in which he is accused of anti-Semitic and racist
attacks on bar patrons, and deny having such prejudices.

Galliano “was sick, very sick with addictions to alcohol
and drugs” for which he is receiving treatment, his lawyer,
Aurelien Hamelle, said in a telephone interview last week.
“This is not the trial of a racist man or an anti-Semitic man,
it is the trial of a sick man who said things he doesn’t believe
-- that he doesn’t even remember.”

Galliano’s accusers at a trial today claim he uttered the
slurs at a cafe in Paris’s fashionable third arrondissement.
Within days of that Feb. 24 incident, an undated video of a
slurring Galliano praising Adolf Hitler, and saying “people
like you would be dead,” was posted on the website of the U.K.
tabloid The Sun.

The designer was fired by the 65-year-old Paris fashion
house a day after the video’s release. Dior, which also owns
Galliano’s namesake label, dismissed him three days before he
was to host the fashion house’s women’s ready-to-wear show in
Paris and hasn’t replaced him. Sidney Toledano, Dior’s chief
executive officer, spoke at the show, saying that while Galliano
is “brilliant,” his comments were “intolerable because of our
collective duty to never forget the Holocaust and its victims.”

In Vino, Veritas

Galliano’s addictions can’t excuse his statements, said
Eric Zerbib, a lawyer for LICRA, an international organization
opposed to racism and anti-semitism that is one of three
advocacy groups supporting the prosecution.

“It doesn’t explain and it doesn’t excuse anything,” said
Zerbib. “In vino, veritas. In wine, the truth. Wine has a
liberating effect which allows one to know an individual’s real
personality, and given that the deeds were repeated several
times, thus we know John Galliano’s personality.”

Galliano was arrested after Geraldine Bloch and Philippe
Virgitti said he insulted them in February. A third victim,
Fathia Oumeddour, reported a similar episode in October after
Bloch and Virgitti spoke out. Their complaints are the subject
of today’s trial.

The 50-year-old, Gibraltar-born designer, who under
sentencing rules for hate speech faces a maximum 22,500-euro
($32,300) fine and six months in prison if found guilty, will
testify, Hamelle said. Similar cases “most often” result in
fines rather than jail time, he said.

‘Not at All Lucid’

The trial will come down to whose testimony the judges
believe, as other witnesses from the café “don’t confirm
exactly, or not at all, what the victims say,” Hamelle said.

“We don’t have a video for these events,” Hamelle said.
Galliano “doesn’t remember what he said, or didn’t say, because
he wasn’t at all lucid.”

Galliano dropped the defamation claims he filed against
Bloch and Virgitti in February. He issued a statement the day
after his firing saying “anti-Semitism and racism have no part
in our society.”

“I have fought my entire life against prejudice,
intolerance and discrimination, having been subjected to it
myself,” he said.

The video in which he spoke of Hitler shocked Galliano
himself, Hamelle said.

“He saw the video in which he made statements, which he is
the first to say are unacceptable, he regrets it, he is sorry
that he caused such distress,” Hamelle said.